Joe Lieberman: “No government today poses a greater threat to the United States, indeed, to the Middle East and probably to the world…”

“No government today poses a greater threat to the United States, indeed, to the Middle East and probably to the world, than the Islamic Republic of Iran. We are all aware of the belligerent international behavior of the Iranian regime, its efforts to develop nuclear weapons, its use of Islamist terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Taliban, to undermine moderate governments across the Middle East, its designation by the United States State Department as the No. 1 state sponsor of terror and, of course, its escalating proxy war against American troops and Iraqi civilians and military in Iraq, where the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has been training, arming, equipping, and directing terrorists who are responsible in turn for the murder of hundreds of American soldiers and the murder of thousands of Iraqi civilians and soldiers. What may, I fear, be less appreciated is that Iran's extremist terrorist behavior abroad is matched by equally extremist behavior at home. Just as the Iranian regime has been supporting the forces of repression and terror against the people of Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, it is also escalating a campaign of repression and terror against its own citizens, the people of Iran.”